——— Assembling The Avengers ———

Captain America’s Shield

(2012)

When I was young I thought Captain America was pretty cool, but he wasn’t my favourite Avenger. As I go older, his comics story lines got to be some of the best for me and by the time Civil War came out, there was no question whose side I was on.

Cap’s shield is not only one of the greatest weapons in all of comics, it’s as iconic a symbol as the shield on Superman’s chest. When I started to make the shield, I intended to make it the proper size and approximately curved, but it only occurred to me to build handles once I had don e all the initial layering. So I flipped it over, gutted the back and built in handles reinforced with as many technic parts as I could manage.

It’s my personal favourite of all the Super Hero builds and it’s always a big hit at shows. Adults eyes light up when I ask if they want to hold it and kids delight in hitting it to see how strong it is. It’s always a treat to take it out and I even cosplayed as Cap at Halcon for a full day. Let me tell you something… it gets heavy quick.

Thor’s Hammer – Mjolnir

(2012)

Growing up, Thor was my favourite Avenger and I had a ton of old issues. I was and still am a big fan of mythologies, so Thor had the great quality of taking the old and mixing it up in that crazy comic book/soap opera sort of way. Even in the Ultimate Universe Thor’s character changes are the least annoying to me. My childhood love of those comics is a big part of the reason my son’s name is Odin.

I built the hammer so that it could be lifted (assuming you’re worthy), but the handle wasn’t very sturdy. I revisited it in 2017 though. The wrist gauntlet was an excercise in pushing a technique beyond it’s limit and you have to complete the look, right?

Black Widow’s Belt & Wrist Stingers

(2012)

My initial stage of Avengers builds coincided with the peak of our entry into cosplay. Accordingly, I designed these accessories for my wife to be able to cosplay as (at the time) her only female option for an Avenger. It was fun to do and while they held together well, she never would have been able to wear them all day without losing bits. The stingers stand as the only thing I’ve ever glued together, but the dishes were so expensive I just used a bit of blue tac to hold them on. /shame

Hawkeye’s Bow & Arrows

(2012)

This one has caught a lot of people off guard. It’s all LEGO, there’s no glued parts and even the string is LEGO. It’s built with just enough curve to allow for some pull back before the stress becomes too much and it falls apart. That allowed for the shooting of one of the LEGO arrows up to a few feet. It looked pretty funny, actually. The trick arrows are all variations of ones I’d seen in either Hawkeye or Green Arrow comics. They all serve a specific function like acid capsules, grappling hook, tracer and heavy explosives. You know, the basics.

Tony Stark’s Arc Reactor

(2012)

I had to do quite a few orders to complete Cap’s shield, so I figured a full set of Iron Man armour was out of the question at the time. This was the runner up for me. The reactor is a fairly close approximation of the screen prop, but I had to just throw the movie stand look out the window and build my own version. This is very fragile and I’m always amazed how long t has managed to stay together.

Iron Man’s Hall Of Armour

(2014)

By 2014, LEGO had made about seven different Iron Man figures, so while I wanted to build a hall of armour it would’ve been underwhelming. By this time you could get about 20 different knockoff Iron Man variants from Chinese distributors, so I went ahead and ordered some and built this to beef up the design from Iron Man 3.

Iron Man’s Hall Of Armour 1.5

(2016)

After a couple of years, there were many more options for knockoff suits, so I decided to add a couple stories to the hall. I really like the suits based on other heroes, even DC. They’re silly, but a lot of fun.

Iron Man’s Hall Of Armour 2.0

(2017)

— Coming Soon —

Spider-Man’s Web Shooters

(2014)

Spider-man is my all-time favourite superhero and his web shooters are as iconic a piece of comic book as there is, but you rarely ever see them in over 60 years of media. You see the effects, but the shooters themselves are almost always covered up by his suit. I based my design on the classic version from the early comic books with the blocky cartridges wrapped around the wrist and the pressure pad activating the nozzle.